So you may have heard about Steve Job’s public denouncement of DRM. Pretty important stuff for the CEO of a company who stands to benefit a hella lot from the DRM system built into iTunes.
[DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and prevents people who buy music with DRM technologies from using it in all the ways that they ought to, so as to protect record companies 'rights' and prevent stealing inappropriate usage of said music. There's a great write up at Wikipedia if you're interested]
I think you can file this under “a generally good thing“, because now both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have both gone on record to denounce DRM, hopefully paving the way for a gilded future where we will have DRM’less music being able to be played in limitless combinations.
But … so, what. After all, that’s pretty much what everyone else is saying.
While I think its great in so far that it heralds a public departure from the old school way of things, and floats my own anti-establishment views a little, the cynic in me feels the need to make a few observations:
First off — it takes NO balls to make a public denouncement of DRM when you’ve ALREADY established iTunes as the pre-eminent brand in downloadable music. If they WERE to lift DRM from iTunes tomorrow do you think iTunes would lose much music?
I think they might actually GAIN from it, for a whole bunch of reasons. Most importantly because they already have the biggest brand and biggest “mind share”. When many people think “mp3″ they already think of “iPod” and “iTunes”.
Steve Jobs (yes, in my enormous hubris I’m talking directly to Steve right now) it would take balls for you to make the SAME announcement before iTunes ever started, when it was still a “level playing field’. Yes, I understand the big bad media companies “made” you sign deals to include DRM because its “them” and not “you”. That’s fine.
And the fact that you *didn’t* makes me believe that you either don’t hold those opinions about the evils of DRM as close to your heart as you say you do. Or, if you do, you only hold them when its convenient for you.
As in, not publicly announcing them while iTunes grows to be the gorrilla-in-the-room it currently is.
Much like Google’s bully tactics in trying to establish legislation in varying states as they expand their operations, let’s not forget there are probably real reasons why Jobs is saying what he is when he is.
Other worthwhile opinions:
- Dave Winer hits the nail with this one: its easy to run your mouth on a technology that added billions to your bottom line when record companies are just about to go a DRM-less route anyway.
- Thomas Hawk has interesting thoughts on it: with the iPhone around the corner, he’s reinforcing his Apple as the iconoclast hipster brand by thumbing his nose at the big, bad, music companies. With millions (billions?) of bucks down the pipe due to phone sales (and ringtones?) blowing one part of Apple up for the sake of a newer part is entirely consistent with who Jobs is and what he’s done.
- And Nick Carr also gets the right of it: by denouncing DRM he’s putting the ball squarely back in Europe’s court and making it the record companies’ fault. He’s now either counting on European bureaucratic sluggishness to make things a moot point OR playing the fanboy card in front of new DRM-less changes anyway.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:45 pm | Permalink
[...] Commentary about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ clarion call for non-DRM’ed music already fills more than two pages of Techmeme, but naturally that’s not going to stop me from chiming in (it never has before ). And there’s no question that Jobs’ statement is a landmark event. I’ll leave it to others to decide how much of it is a heartfelt statement of belief and how much is marketing spin (Tony Hung has some thoughts on that over at Deep Jive Interests), but it’s clear that Steve-O is trying very hard to lay the blame for DRM at the foot of the music labels. [...]
February 6th, 2007 at 11:46 pm | Permalink
[...] Here, from TechMeme, are all the people who are talking about it: Deep Jive Interests, mathewingram.com/work, Tech Trader Daily, Open Source, Between the Lines, Webomatica, New Web Order, Vindu’s View from the Valley, Scobleizer, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Jeffrey McManus, Ars Technica, Tech Beat, Guardian Unlimited, The Next Net, InfoWorld Tech Watch, Gizmodo, IPcentral Weblog, MacUser, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Apple Gazette, The Technology Liberation …, Technovia, InformationWeek Weblog, down the avenue, A Copyfighter’s Musings, The Tech Report, confused of calcutta, Paul Colligan’s …, The 463, Things That, PaulStamatiou.com, TechBlog, Macsimum News, i-boy, The Last Podcast, The Digital Edge Blog, The Workplace Blog, Rex Hammock’s weblog, Forward Thinking, Seeking Alpha, WeBreakStuff, Business Filter, Change Is Good, Paul Kedrosky’s …, BuzzMachine, The Future of Music …, The Viral Garden, Medialoper, Fast Company Now, Jeremy Toeman’s LIVEdigitally, Blogging Stocks, The Gong Show, DeWitt Clinton, Blackfriars’ Marketing, Listening Post, Geek News Central, SearchViews, rc3.org, A VC, Life On the Wicked Stage, PSFK Trend: PSFK, Buzzworthy, robhyndman.com, Slashdot, Ministry of Tech, Joseph Scott’s Blog, Podcasting News, Paul Thurrott’s Internet Nexus and UNEASYsilence [...]
February 7th, 2007 at 12:34 am | Permalink
Of course there are self-serving reasons, but you’ve got the wrong one. Go check out http://www.macworld.com/news/2002/03/04/jobs/ where it says: “If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,” said Jobs.”
This is a year before the iTunes store opened up on 4/28/2003. I think Steve found the labels didn’t agree with him, but his desire to open up the store led him to give in on it.
Note also that Apple bought Fairplay from Veridisc sometime around the end of 2002 (couldn’t locate the exact date). There’s good reason to believe that Apple was not working on DRM but had to get it in order to open up the store.
As for self-serving reasons: MS holds key DRM patents, which makes improviing FairPlay difficult unless Apple is willing to pay MS for licenses.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:54 am | Permalink
Mark,
Great quote.
I’d also love to see the full article in the WSJ with Don Clark (can’t find it by Googling … maybe its behind a paid firewall).
Without the full article, I’m finding it hard to interpret the quote. Who’s to say what he means when he says you have the “right to manage it on all other devices you own”? Does it mean you have *all* rights, or *limited* rights? And did he follow up this quote with any others or was this in isolation?
Let me know if you find anything else. I haven’t (yet).
Cheers
t @ dji
February 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am | Permalink
Can’t get behind the wsj paid firewall without paying.
Most Jobs fans remember the quote. It was in the period when Apple was accused of promoting piracy because of Rip. Mix. Burn. so it pertains mostly to ripping CDs, which Jobs brings up in his letter as a reason for dropping DRM on digital downloads. I think he’s referring to “all” rights, such as you would have with CDs.
The second reason to remember the quote is that Steve also said around June 2003 something along the lines of no movie studio should jump the gun and allow HD content to be sold (including HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) without adequate DRM protection. It was taken to be a jab at the perceived inadequacy of MS’ video DRM. That seemed to be a startling contrast to his previous statement about music.
Taking the two together, I interpreted Jobs position as this: if people are used to the content being unrestricted (a la CDs) then it’s too late. But no HD content was yet available at the time so it’s okay to protect it and condition people to accept that as the norm.
I think his letter is still consistent with this. I’m awaiting the sale of HD content on iTunes to see how the other shoe drops.
Also, the most self-serving reason for this letter is that soon Apple will be entering negotiations with the labels. Last year, Apple’s fight was to just maintain the 99 cent song and Jobs publicly uttered the words the labels “are just being greedy”. And Jobs got one year renewals (a renewal is like a continuing budget resolution in Congress where both sides agree to the status quo and delay the battle for another year). This year, it looks as if there will be some movement to abolish DRM. And I think Apple is looking at more than a one-year deal. So Jobs is just getting consumers to be on his side when he confronts the labels with this, and thus reduce the cost he’ll have to pay to get it from the labels. Remember that Universal Music’s going in position is to have Apple pay them a few dollars per iPod sold, a la its Zune deal.
February 7th, 2007 at 3:48 am | Permalink
You got one thing right– he’s got balls now. More balls than it takes for you to bash him based on your own lack of knowledge about the situation.
Steve also had balls back before the itunes store when he released the original itunes whose sole purpose was to rip CDs and allowed people to burn mix CDS. He also had the balls to go up against the record industry back when everyone was still saying Apple was down for the count and hold the line at $0.99 for songs and get great rights — much better than other online music stores.
I’m tired of seeing ignorant windows weenies bash apple because they think that itunes is a “monopoly” and that apple is forcing DRM on people.
Nothing could be further from the truth– the iTunes store covers teh cost of itunes development, and its whole purpose for existance is to sell more iPods. Apple will continue to sell more ipods even without DRM.
Jobs has the balls to make a commitment like he did here– and he has called your bluff. Weenies can still bash him out of ignorance, but increasingly it is you who are going to look ball-less.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:19 am | Permalink
I dig Job’s approach to most things. And he does one thing really well - spin everything to protect Apple’s image. He’s great at it. Really, Look how appealing he made a $600 cell phone recently. I was salivating after watching the keynote for iPhone.
Jobs has always had self (and Apple) interests at the forefront. It’s what’s made him successful. And he can go on saying what he’s saying about DRM because of iTunes.
In my opinion, the man is a marketing genius and he taked advantage of every opportunity he can to give Apple an edge.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am | Permalink
And why wouldn’t he offer up a stance that Apple can profit from? In a public company the CEO has to look out for the interests of his shareholders first. Of course removing DRM gets Apple out of a lot of legal messes in Europe but he is right- it is the RIAA who has been suing customers repeatedly and adding draconian DRM schemes (remember those Sony rootkits?) to their products.
Vilifying Jobs for clearly explaining the issues in a way that the music companies will have a hard time refuting is ridiculous. Apple will benefit but so will the rest of us.
Respectfully: You’re wrong.
February 7th, 2007 at 11:36 am | Permalink
The spelling and grammatical errors add a lot to this article. Are they indicative of the content? Maybe it’s just a Web 2.0 thing. I dunno.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:10 pm | Permalink
Apple’s iPod was a year on the market before iTunes Store was on the internet. iPod sales ramped up rapidly once iTunes ran on Windows. Most iPod content is ripped as mp3 tracks from the non-DRM CDs the music companies sell.
The average iPod contains about 20 iTunes Store downloads. How can $20 in content drive you to not buy a Zune? Jobs lobbied hard for a more lenient DRM and simpler pricing than Microsoft’s affiliates. iPods and iTunes are an “experience” that sells iPods regardless of online music sales. If it’s competitor’s online stores’ music played on iPods and there was no iTunes Store Apple would still dominate the market.
February 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm | Permalink
“First off — it takes NO balls to make a public denouncement of DRM when you’ve ALREADY established iTunes as the pre-eminent brand in downloadable music. If they WERE to lift DRM from iTunes tomorrow do you think iTunes would lose much music?”
Did you read the letter? iTunes would not lose much music, but Apple would lose lawsuits and a ton of money. In my book, doing what you advocate is not called having balls. It’s called being irresponsibly stupid.
“And the fact that you *didn’t* makes me believe that you either don’t hold those opinions about the evils of DRM as close to your heart as you say you do. Or, if you do, you only hold them when its convenient for you.”
What would that have accomplished? Again, running your mouth without the proper leverage is being irresponsibly stupid. Do you know that Steve Jobs didn’t try to negotiate a non-DRM solution to the record labels? Trying to turn this into a good-vs-evil issue is foolish. Steve Jobs was making a logical (and financially sound) argument.
Finally, have you used Mac products for any length of time? Do you know that the vast majority of Apple’s software is sold without registration keys, unlike Microsoft’s products? Do you know that Apple gave away system updates in its early days for free? Do you know that Apple is a contributor in today’s open-source community?
February 7th, 2007 at 7:01 pm | Permalink
Jobs is no saint, but do you really believe the iPods is a success or continues to be a success because of Fairplay (DRM)? Get a clue. Jobs is indeed attempting to clarify the argument and issues around iTunes and DRMs. Balls has nothing to do with it.